Ghyll:Ungerry-Tubers
dibs --Nikos of Ant 17:28, 8 October 2005 (EDT)
"Howzingery is, in most of Ghyll, an extremely rare occurrence - rare enough that it wouldn't normally be worth writing an encyclopedia article about since, for the most part, only a few very dedicated scholars even know or care about such things as Howzingery, and they already know everything they need to know about it. However, it has recently been discovered that Howzingery is an extremely commonplace occurrence in some isolated geological spots, such as Ungerry-Tubers, and therefore it is worth explaining for the sake of the occasional traveller visiting those places...
...The only other thing worth mentioning is that the inhabitants of those vague, isolated spots where Howzingery is common often mention that there is some connection between it and the heh-blammo balance. If there is any truth behind this statement, it has yet to be revealed."
Old hat, the phrase, is used to refer to tasks or events that one is particularly familiar with to the point at which they have become routine. For instance: "I have written and researched 13 articles for this encyclopedia already, so creating new ones has become old hat."
"Old Hat: Most people, however, are not familiar with the story behind the phrase. It began in a small town in the general vicinity of Ungerry-Tubers called Prollztqx."
"With comfortable financial resources at his disposal, Pricludious set about on a grand exploration of Ghyll. His life up till then had been spent within the great urban centers of society and their surrounding country. But now he looked toward the rest of Ghyll and for the next 30 years traveled extensively up and down the little trodden places of the world.
In time he came to the Sarfelogian Mountains and in a quiet, willow strewn valley there entered the village of Thopth. He had been casually aware of the existence of the place but had never given it much thought as it was far too difficult to reach on a regular journey and was, after all, just one of the many unvisited, uncouth, unmodern villages that dotted the slopes and valleys and river windings of the great northern mountainways...
At the heart of the community is the M.Collegium, also known as the Collegium Civitas. It is a small institution and has few of the facilities and none of the luxuries of our modern academic institutions. But its faculty is most learned and wise, and the student body eagerly delves into knowledge both known and unknown. If anyone there is aware of the vast limitations of their backward academy, they don't seem to care very much about it. And indeed, in some respects, the Collegium is arguably superior to the universities of southern Ghyll. The departments of biotoxicology (the study of living things) and taxidermatology (the study of dead things) are amazingly impressive, both in the sheer depth of the knowledge they've accumulated and in the incredible breadth of the collections they've amassed. Pricludious reported seeing stuff there that would make faculty members of Bute University or the Thoorbone Academy drool with envy. The school's library is a maze (quite literally) of shelves and books and half-hidden recesses and, though unfortunately lacking in many modern texts, has a wealth of ancient, near-ancient, and pre-ancient manuscripts that most scholars had long ago assumed lost to the depradations of time, neglect and incompetent librarians...
But it is clear from what we do know that, during the 30 years that Pricludious spent traveling the mountains and dells and meadowlands of unfrequented and unexplored Ghyll, he found many a fascinating discovery and made many a surprising observation. For instance, in one letter he sent to his sister, he mentioned an unexpected meeting with a strange race of foreigners near a particularly cold and deep glacial lake; the encounter seemed to trouble Pricludious but unfortunately he was very vague about the details. In another, it was said that he came across an ancient ruin of strange design that had peculiar similiarities with certain modern constructions like the headquarters of the Bureau of Forgotten Knowledge, the building known as The Cake, but as that letter has never been presented for public scrutiny we cannot be sure of the veracity of the account. While exactly where these and other such incidents took place is uncertain beyond a general idea of under there or over here, in some instances we do have more than just a vague conjecture as to his whereabouts. We know for a fact, as an example, that he made at least one trip to the cactus forests.
Still, the lack of a detailed record of Pricludious's journeys, along with the withholding of the bulk of his correspondence and private ruminations from his journals, is a regretable loss, not only to students of Pricludious but to the general well being of scholarship at large; one hopes it will some day be rectified...
...He wrote various philosophical treatises on the odd religiotropic cults that exist in the upper-peaks of the Sarfelogian Mountain Range (areas frequented by communities even more isolated than in middle or lower Sarfelogia) and also published his notes on the beliefs and practices of those small in-bred family-clans of fishers and sand snorklers that can be found on the less desirable edges of the Dagger Seas. His observations and subsequent comparisons with our own belief systems were surprising and, of course, quite controversial.
